Authenticity and anachronistic media forms: visual presentations of politicians in party-political broadcasting

Chapter 14: With many countries currently experiencing periods of populist leadership, the visual construction of politicians as authentic and, at least in some senses, "ordinary" people with more in common with voters than political elites, is a particularly important feature of contemporary visual politics. Whilst debates rage about the rapidly changing environment for visual political communication through social media platforms, other more traditional vehicles for the visual presentation of politicians remain important and interesting electoral platforms in many countries, through which to analyse the construction of political personae. Taking the British system of Party Political Broadcasting on television as its focus, this chapter explores how the somewhat anachronistic British system, designed in the legacy media era of the 1950s yet barely changed into the 2020s, has evolved over time in its constructions of political authenticity. With three general elections and the Brexit referendum campaign all occurring within the last five years, the British case provides a particularly rich body of recent material through which to consider the construction of political authenticity through party materials produced for television. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on the changing visual landscape for politics, and how the intersections between traditional, legacy media formats and the emergent new media landscape are important features of future research agendas in visual political communication research.